Many people in the world have disabilities that make it difficult or impossible for them to control aspects of their physical living environment in the same ways that ordinary people can. For example, a disabled person may not easily be able to control various living environment devices, such as clocks, phones, beds, televisions, doors, lights, elevators, VCRs, DVD players, digital video recorders, CD players, cable television boxes, tape players, stereo systems, satellite television boxes, radios, fans, thermostats, doors, windows, microwave ovens, and others. To address this need, assistive devices, referred to herein for purposes of explanation as Environmental Control Units (“ECUs”), have been developed. An increasing number of people rely on ECUs to control aspects of their living environment on a day to day basis.
A number of problems arise when managing multiple ECUs. Hospitals, assisted living facilities, and other institutions where potentially large numbers of ECU users live or visit must manage ECUs for many different users in many different living environments. In such situations, it is critical that ECU users be able to move from one living environment to another, sometimes from one room to another within the facility, and at other times between the hospital and a home living environment. When ECU users become accustomed to a certain level of independence using an ECU within a current living environment, they are reluctant to move anywhere in which they may not have that independence. This reluctance may cause them to resist traveling from their home living environment to a hospital, even for medically required treatments. Accordingly, hospitals and other living facilities desire to be able to assure ECU users that they will be provided with a level of ECU functionality during their stay that approaches or is equivalent to that which they are accustomed to having at their home. Unfortunately, previous systems have not allowed hospitals to make such assurances, and have in fact made it time consuming and inconvenient to move ECU users between living environments.
Using previous systems, moving an ECU user from one living environment to another often required moving various controlled devices into the new living environment together with the patient's dedicated ECU. Even when a hospital provided an ECU for a patient to use during their stay, configuring and setting up the hospital's ECU for the user in the new environment was difficult and time consuming. As a result, disabled persons have been disinclined to move between living environments, even when such moves are medically required. The shortcomings of previous approaches have also caused hospitals and other institutions to face similar problems when moving ECU users between rooms within their facilities.
Some of the problems in previous systems are associated with the complexities involved in programming and/or reconfiguring ECUs. These difficulties are exacerbated in institutions in which large numbers of ECU users permanently reside or visit temporarily. The costs associated with ECU management in such facilities should be minimized in order to reduce the associated administration costs.
For the above reasons and others, it would be desirable to have a new system for managing a network of ECUs that allows ECU users to conveniently change living environments, and that allows a hospital or other institution in which large numbers of ECU users are located to conveniently manage large numbers of ECUs.